


crimson lips and crimson fingernails

by Biscay



Category: Home Fires (UK TV)
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-11
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 20:10:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6822247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Biscay/pseuds/Biscay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Throwing herself into Frances' company and Teresa at Nick is the obvious solution to what is becoming, in Alison's mind, quite a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	crimson lips and crimson fingernails

**Author's Note:**

> Title (and lots of inspiration for this) from Virginia Woolf's essay Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid.
> 
> HUGE thanks to @ukulelefoot and @cantstopimagining for being amazing and getting me through the S2 finale :')

Before Teresa, Alison could go months at a time without touching another person. Miriam's hand might brush hers as she accepted payment for slices of bacon, Sarah might bump into her as they set the village hall up for a WI meeting, and new clients would be greeted with a firm, efficient handshake, but stroking Boris' shaggy fur was the closest thing to contact Alison usually came. As soon as she arrives, Teresa begins pushing boundaries Alison didn't realise she had; going in for hugs, asking for dances, slipping her hand into Alison's like it's the most natural thing in the world. She should be taken aback, flustered, but mostly, as Teresa settles next to her on the sofa, barely a hair's breadth between them, she wonders how she ever lived without it.

The world tilts on its axis after Teresa comes clean about Connie. Alison knows, somewhere inside, before she asks the question. The air is thick as she barely dares to put a name to it, to bring it out into the open. She tells Teresa that she's put her in a difficult position. Teresa nods tearfully, as though she understands, but Alison doesn't know what she means as she says it. 

(“lovers” echoes endlessly in her head; when she's trying to focus on work, when she's going to sleep, always when she's going to sleep, lying in bed trying not to think about it, about Teresa just a room away-)

Teresa backs off after that. She stops initiating contact at all, even volunteers to move out, but where Teresa pushed before, Alison feels compelled to pull. Their ebb and flow keep a constant state of highly-charged equilibrium. 

Alison knows how absence makes the heart – hurt, twist; 'fondness' is far too kind a word for the void after the telegram telling her that George was missing, the feeling when she's sitting in her cell aching with the loss of Teresa, Boris, her home. Things shift again when she is released; freedom is so sweet, and Teresa's joyful smile and arms holding her close make her feel, for a moment (for long enough to decide to help her country), like she can do anything.

The feeling is short-lived. Germany's bombs are a cruel reminder of her powerlessness and, cowering in the underground shelter, Alison succumbs to creeping fear. Enemy planes circle around again and again like hornets, and the room is tense and pitch-black, the oil in Frances' lamp long-since consumed. Alison closes her eyes anyway and thinks of George. It is difficult to imagine a time before sirens and gas masks, but with a tremendous focus she can remember their walks, their embraces, all the plans they made.

A bomb landing far too close snaps Alison out of her reverie, and wisps of memory fade instantly. Her mind needs something to cling to, and in the darkness her senses are pulled to Teresa like gravity bringing the bombs surely to earth. Teresa's perfume, nearly faded in the evening, is a single sweet note in the sweaty, cramped room that reminds Alison of cartfulls of animals being taken to market. Her breathing is focused; careful, measured inhales and exhales, no frantic whispered prayers or gasps of fear.

Teresa is so brave, in the shelter and out: standing up for Mrs Esposito, for Laura Campbell – she deserves better than Alison. Teresa deserves someone who will be proud to have her on their arm (to marry, to have children with; surely that's what Teresa wants) and Alison knows she will never be that person. The shelter shudders and Teresa must sense Alison's fear because she reaches for her hand in reassurance. Alison's heart races at the touch, and in that moment she decides what she must do.

The Flight Commander – bold enough to ask Teresa to dance, to ask her on a date – is surely what's best. 

* * *

In the harsh light of day, Alison puts her plan into action. Teresa is reluctant, surprised, and, Alison can tell like a stab in the chest, very hurt. She puts on a brave face though (always so brave) and doesn't flinch as Alison tells her how this is her chance to be normal, how Connie could be the last.

Alison is sure she can do this. Nick is a man – the reason for Teresa's reluctance and Alison's enthusiasm – but if Alison can fall for Teresa after George, surely Teresa can love Nick after Connie?

Third-wheeling on Teresa and Nick's date is unconventional, but so is the way Teresa's eyes meet hers over shepherd's pie, the shared smile that Alison has to break away from – this is not the time or the place (she reminds herself: it is never the time or place). 

After dinner, Nick obliviously decants to the living room. 

“I'll do the dishes,” Alison insists, “you two need to spend some time together.”

“No, you cooked; let me do them.”

The look in Teresa's eye is somewhere between a plea and a challenge, and Alison gives in to Teresa's request because she doesn't know what she'll give in to if she doesn't.

The date ends with Alison and Nick sharing a pot of tea, Teresa scrubbing plates in the kitchen.

* * *

The scene is a familiar one; Teresa arrives home and Alison looks up from her desk, glasses pushed to the edge of her nose.

“He's asked me to marry him.” 

Alison has suffered through enough air raids to feel qualified to mentally class Teresa's news as a bombshell; actual bombs have left silences less stunned. 

“Alison, did you hear me?”

“Yes!” Alison stands up. “That's- that's wonderful news. Isn't it?”

“Yes.” Teresa's bright red smile doesn't remotely reach her eyes. “He said I should think about it.”

In the time since Teresa came to stay, she and Alison have shared countless joyful moments, all marked by Teresa pulling Alison in for a long, tight hug. The hugs have become expected, reciprocated, and even initiated by Alison. Neither of them go in for a hug now. 

“Congratulations,” Alison manages. 

“He'll- we'll want to get married soon,” Teresa says, filling the silence, “wartime and all.”

“Of course.”

“I'll have to move out.”

Life will go back to before-Teresa. The loneliest Alison has ever been; back to meals for one, walking Boris alone, to never being touched except by accidental strangers. As if in protest, Boris whines from across the room.

“Is-” Alison says before she can stop herself. 

“Is what?” Teresa asks, finally coming within the mile-wide barrier Alison has been trying desperately to maintain.

“Is that what you want?”

“Alison,” Teresa sighs, “you know what I want.”

Alison meets Teresa's eyes for a few moments, then steps forward and kisses her. Teresa takes a step to steady herself, but Alison has been wanting to do this for so long, had promised herself it would never happen-

Her footing adjusted, Teresa kisses her back, equally demanding. Alison tastes every inch of Teresa's lips and it's everything she guiltily dreamed it would be. Teresa's hands are confident; touching Alison's wrist, her waist, like she knows the effect it will have. These hands are surely not the same that awkwardly shook Nick's hand in the garden (Alison spying through the net curtain, disappointed and elated). Teresa deepens the kiss and Alison tightly grasps Teresa's cardigan with one hand, the other holding the edge of her desk for support.

They break apart for breath and Alison takes in Teresa's smudged lipstick and dilated pupils. The realisation that this is what she should have been doing with her fear hits her with an almost physical force. George showed her in life how to love and in death how not to take it for granted. He would have wanted her to find happiness – if “it can never be a sin to love another human being” isn't a blessing, she doesn't know what is. She takes off her glasses and sets them on her desk.

“I'm sorry,” she says. Teresa takes her hand and pulls her close. “I'm so sorry Teresa.”

“It's all right,” Teresa kisses her, reassuring and stimulating all at once. “We're all right.”

“Don't marry him.” Alison says with seriousness, which makes Teresa laugh.

“I won't.” Teresa says, “and I should probably let him know before word gets out to the entire village.”

“I want you to stay.”

Teresa kisses her again and Alison relishes every single point at which their bodies touch. 

“I will.” Teresa promises.


End file.
